The fact that Jehovah’s great day did not come long ago has allowed for our own salvation. The apostle Peter stated:

“Consider the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul according to the wisdom given him also wrote you,

—2 Peter 3:15,

23. (a) Why should we not presume on God’s patience? (b) How did some in the first century fail to recognize the reason for God’s patience?

²³ As persons who appreciate Jehovah’s patience, we will want to be careful not to presume on it, justifying a particular course of selfishness on the basis that God’s great day may yet be far away. In the first century C.E., there were believers who apparently did this. The apostle Peter describes them as “untaught and unsteady,” lacking a clear understanding of God’s Word and being unstable with reference to Christian doctrine and practice. These persons even tried to use statements from the letters of the inspired apostle Paul and other parts of the Scriptures to excuse their wrong conduct. It may be that they pointed to what Paul had written about the exercise of conscience and about being declared righteous by faith and not by works of the Mosaic law as providing latitude for all kinds of actions that were contrary to God’s will. (Compare Romans 3:5-8; 6:1; 7:4; 8:1, 2; Galatians 3:10.) They may have misused such points as the following:

“Christ set us free. Therefore stand fast, and do not let yourselves be confined again in a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1) “All things are lawful for me.” (1 Corinthians 6:12) “All things are clean to clean persons.” (Titus 1:15)

However, they ignored that Paul also said:

“Do not use this freedom as an inducement for the flesh, but through love slave for one another. For the entire Law stands fulfilled in one saying, namely: ‘You must love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Galatians 5:13, 14) “Let each one keep seeking, not his own advantage, but that of the other person.”​—1 Corinthians 10:24.